Rockwell Collins is very much involved in the development of the GPS system. They built the first GPS satellites and even the first experimental receiver, the "Generalized development model" in 1977. Rockwell Collins is focused on the professional and military segment. Their first approach was the AN/PSN-8, a portable military GPS receiver, called the manpack.The Rockwell Trooper (called HNV-600) seems to be an attempt to enter the commercial market. The design and the utilization is completely different from their military model of that time. It features a graphical display and an innovative soft-key interface. The unit is operated by six aa-batteries, a nicad pack or external power. The Trooper has the ability to communicate with another unit with an infrared optical link. The satellite signals are tracked by a five channel parallel receiver.Navigation information is provided by three data screens. The highway screen shows a graphical presentation of the direction to travel. The plotter screen displays the track, waypoints and routes. 100 waypoints and 10 routes with up to 25 waypoints can be stored. The Trooper has a combined data / antenna port.The Trooper is the first GPS unit with flash memory. This solves the problem that stored data is lost without batteries installed. Flash memory was very expensive by that time. The infrared link is another feature that is way ahead of its time. The user interface with the soft key concept is quite intuitive. Unfortunately the Trooper is huge like a brick and eats batteries.Many of these units have problems with the GPS reception. I suspect aging electrolytic capacitors for this issue.

Initialization:The Trooper initializes fully automatic, there is no user input necessary. A city of a list can be chosen to define an initial position.

It should be mentioned that the company Rockwell Collins was part of Rockwell International when the Trooper was built. The manufacturer is therefore "Rockwell International Corporation - Collins Avionics & Communications Division". Rockwell Collins Inc. emerged 2001 when Rockwell International was split up.